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Time--2017 A to Z Theme

My theme for the 2018 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is "Cleaning the Clutter"--I might literally be cleaning my closets or figuratively clearing the excess from some other part of my life. I'm sure you can think of other things this could mean for you as well.

Always a work in progress--welcome to my blog...

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Monday, May 29, 2017

Just thinking back a moment about Gregg Allman and realizing how much his music was part of my life soundtrack. Allman Brothers albums seemed to be playing a lot over my years in East Tennessee back in the early seventies. I can't say I kept up much with Gregg's music in the past few decades, but it was always nice to put on one of those old albums or to hear an Allman song on the radio. Those were some good times with fun distant memories.

Friday, May 26, 2017

Maybe this blog post will be committing a grave breach of trust to the magic profession, but I never took any official magician's code swearing to keep secrecy. Besides what I'm going to reveal is something that was obvious to whatever audience member was looking at it--that is if anyone actually saw it. However this is not so much a story about a great magician's performance of a specific trick as it is an allegory.

Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Masters of Deception and Misdirection

Years ago I went to see a stage production of a famous magician who was on tour with his wife and a sizable cast of performers and stage crew. Prior to seeing the show a magician friend of mine told me to watch one particular aspect of an illusion which would blatantly expose how the trick was done right in plain sight of the audience. The trick featured the vanishing of a large cage with a large duck in it. When the time came for the vanishing duck routine, I carefully watched as I had been instructed.

A farm setting appeared on stage complete with bales of hay and farm implements. The magician and his wife introduced the duck and put it in an ornate cage. All around were dancers dressed in straw hats and overalls circling and leaping about in a frenzied choreographed routine as lively hoedown music was played by a live orchestra. As the dancers pranced and whirled about, the magician placed the duck cage into another box. Suddenly one of the dancers stage left took a spectacular fall throwing the other dancers into a confused panic. The magician and his wife displayed alarm as they moved to see if the dancer was okay. Fortunately, the dancer leaped back up dusting himself off and signaled in a comic way that all was okay. The audience breathed a collective sigh of relief. Without too much of a break in the action, the magician quickly collapsed the box surrounding the cage, but the cage with the duck had vanished!

Though it was difficult for me not to be distracted by the dancer's spill and the confusion that ensued, I instead kept my eyes on the box covering the duck cage. Simultaneous with the dancer's fall, I saw the duck cage yanked off stage right by a rope that had been attached to it. The cage slid quickly across the stage into the wings. Right there for all to see. But so much was happening on the stage that it would be unlikely that anyone would notice unless they were specifically looking like I was doing.

Performance magic is about confusion and distraction. It can also be about subtle misdirection. There are magicians all around us in our everyday lives. They are on television or they are people we encounter in the course of the day. Sometimes there is so much going on that we miss little details in life. Those details usually can explain everything, but they can be so mundane. It's so much more entertaining to watch the spectacle of all that is going on and to believe that the magic is real. Or if not magic, then conspiracies or some other fanciful explanation to all that goes on.

What mystifies you most about the world? How do you feel when you've been fooled and don't know how the trick was done? Is magic more apt to evoke a smile from you or a pouty scowl?

In my previous post I told the story about how my mother got revenge on my father by smoking a cigar. The irony to the story is that my father wouldn't have known that she was smoking the cigar at the time and likely never knew it happened. My mother was angry at my father and did something that she knew he wouldn't have liked even though he had no idea that she was doing it. Unless she told him later, it's likely that my father never knew that my mother had smoked that cigar.

Years later I asked my mother about the incident. She told me that my father had gone to Las Vegas with a friend of his who she didn't like because she thought he was a bad influence. Besides, my mother didn't like the idea of being left at home with two young children when he was out having a fun trip. They were both fairly young at the time having been only married about five years. Bottom line though is that she was jealous.

When my parents were still dating my mother was a cigarette smoker. My father abhorred that practice and made it clear that he would not marry my mother as long as she was a cigarette smoker. She quit and they got married. When the Las Vegas incident came about, my mother found a cigar that had been given to my father in celebration of a baby's birth. To her, smoking that cigar would have pissed my father off though it was not an act that she wanted to blatantly flaunt in front of him. So I guess she smoked it in some sort of clandestine retribution for his leaving.

In some ways this does seem a bit odd, but many years later it was something to which I could somewhat relate. Perhaps taking after my father, I entered adulthood with an abhorrence of tobacco smoke. Many of my friends smoked and though I tolerated it, I hated it and often let my feelings be known. Then I met my first wife who was--at least in my view--a rather heavy smoker. I begrudgingly accepted her habit because, well, because I loved her. But her smoking was often a source of contention between us.

Eventually there were so many differences between us that we parted ways--an idea that was more hers than mine. Strangely, and perhaps not so coincidentally, one of her best friends had split with her husband shortly before our split. They also had the problem of her being a smoker and her husband being an anti-smoker like myself. After my wife and I split, I moved in with this guy and to my shock I discovered that he had taken up the habit of smoking. Soon I too was smoking right along with him, acquiring a two pack a day habit in the process. I guess our vengeance on our exes was taking up the vice that we disliked most about them.

Sometimes smoking that big old fat smelly cigar of vengeance is just what it takes to prove a point. What that point is I don't really know. I'm not sure about my old roommate, but I took my cigarette habit into my next marriage to another woman who smoked and we both remained heavy smokers for a couple years into our marriage until she became pregnant and we both quit. Both of us quit cold turkey and that was it. At least until another bout of vengeance reared it's ugly butt. But that's another story for another day. So have a cigar, cigarette, or whatever it is you're smoking.

Battle of the Bands Results

My vote in this Battle between two versions of "Have a Cigar" by Pink Floyd goes to the disco psychedelic take by Little Virgin Experience. Even though I'm a big fan of acoustic versions of big rock songs, the drive of the pulsating rhythm of Little Virgin captured my heart and I'm almost always a sucker for psychedelic music. Acoustic jams take me back to the days when my friends would gather with their instruments and play a song into oblivion. Fun, but no cigar after about fifteen minutes of riffing on the same song.

The voters had a different opinion as they bestowed an early lead on Atlantis Becoming keeping them in an ever rapidly growing lead to which Little Virgin could never catch up with. The outcome was very decisive giving the acoustic jam boys a victory in this Battle.

Final Vote Tally

Atlantis Becoming 20 votesLittle Virgin Experience 8 votes

Next Battle of the Bands on Thursday June 1st

I'll likely have one or two posts prior to the June 1st Battle, but that Thursday Battle is a cinch to happen. This upcoming Battle will begin my summer posting schedule and the song I'll be choosing will be a older popular standard that is about a beginning. And though the song might be old, I'll be using versions by more contemporary artists that all of you should know. These performances might even surprise some of you. Stay tuned! Have you ever tried to get revenge on someone by doing something that was harmful to yourself? Have you ever been a smoker? What was it that caused you to first start a bad habit? .

Have A Cigar, Mom!
The A to Z Reflections have been delivered on many sites and I'm offering a hearty congratulations and a big fat cigar to all of you who finished the 2017 Blogging from A to Z Challenge. And while I'm at it let me wish all you mothers a belated Happy Mother's Day and hand you a big ol' cigar as well.

A cigar for mothers you might ask? Some of you might think of cigars as kind of nasty and nothing that any mother should be smoking. I've never been a cigar smoker although on a few occasions I've tried smoking a stogie when one has been given to me. I don't think I've ever finished one, but I probably wasn't smoking them like they're meant to be smoked. They are kind of nasty in my opinion, but maybe they are an acquired taste.

When I think of cigars I'll think back on the time when my mother was smoking a cigar. This would been around 1955 or so when I was about four or five years old. My younger sister and I were both quite concerned when we found my mother very upset and crying because my father had left on a trip to Las Vegas with a friend of his. We kids began crying along with my mother because we were worried about her and afraid that my father was gone for good.

My mother's tears turned to anger and later we found my mother doing something that baffled us and at the same time amused us greatly--she was smoking a cigar. Our fears vanished in a cloud of smoke so to speak. My sister and I giggled with glee at the spectacle of our mother smoking a cigar. Soon my mother was laughing too. Her anger hadn't completely gone away, but she softened at our giggles and began blowing smoke rings. Her skill at blowing the rings amazed us and she played her cigar smoking role with all she had to give. It was one of those funny life moments that has stuck with me ever since.

Battle of the Bands

Battle of the Bandsisthe blogging event started byFar Away Seriesand now hosted byStMcC Presents Battle of the Bands. This event happens twice each month on the 1st and 15th. The premise is simple: Listen to the songs presented below and then in the comments vote for your favorite and tell us why you liked it. Then visit the links listed near the bottom of this post for more Battle action.

Have A Cigar

From Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here, "Have A Cigar" has many cover versions. You can listen to the original here if interested, but please don't vote on this version since I won't count it in my final tally. No voting for Ron Paul either.

Next a band from Crete performing their psychedelic disco take in the style of the 1979 cover as originally released by the band Rosebud.

Time To Vote! Do you have a preference between these two choices? Hopefully you have an opinion of some kind. Which version do you like the best? Do you prefer the acoustic sound of Atlantis Becoming? Or would you rather rock out to the beat of Little Virgin Experience? You don't have to know about music to have an opinion since it all comes down to your own personal taste.

Winner of this Battle Announced on Monday May 22nd The BOTB results post will be my next post so that gives us all week to vote on this Battle, but please don't tarry and vote now if you can. I'll be tallying the votes in the upcoming weekend. Have you ever smoked a cigar? Did you ever know anyone to smoke a cigar as an expression of anger? Anyone know how the tradition of handing out cigars at the birth of a baby got started?

Monday, May 8, 2017

There's not that much to be said for the 2017 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge that I haven't said in the Reflections posts of previous years. Most of what was said in those posts still holds true. The guiding principles of social blogging still hold true: Leave comments to receive comments and make every attempt to keep things interesting in your posts.

My theme of It's About Time was one of my favorites to ponder and write the posts about. The subject matter was interesting to me and seemed of interest to most readers who left comments for me. I enjoyed the philosophical aspect of each letter topic and I didn't have to spend too much time researching my posts.

Though as is usually the case I didn't get to visit as many blogs as I would have liked, I made new blog discoveries as well as appreciated the blogs of old and newer friends. The array of subjects covered during April with the added bonus of so much fine writing and creativity made blog reading a joy during the entire month.

Personally I had no problem finding blogs to read through reciprocating my comments and practicing the other methods that have been oft repeated on the A to Z Blog and elsewhere. In other words, I stayed busy visiting blogs and never got around to as many as I could have. Not having the Linky List was okay with me and its absence meant that 2017 was the most relaxing unstressful Challenge ever.

I didn't miss the list albeit I did create my own link list (found here) mostly for my own curiosity to see how many participants I could compile. I know I fell way short so I don't have any clear idea of how many A to Z participants there actually were this year. For that matter, I'm not even sure if all of the links I listed continued participating from beginning to end because I wasn't using my own list. However, my list was there for anyone to use. Sorry if I didn't list your blog--it wasn't for any reason other than once April started I stopped trying to add to that list.

So, the bottom line for me is that 2017 was a successful year of Challenge from all that I could see. I enjoyed myself and had fun with it. And it seemed many of you did as well. There's not much more that I could ask for--other than having the kind of A to Z Challenges that I've described in previous Reflections posts and I leave it to you to research if you want to know more about that.

Did you use the link list that I compiled on my site? Did you miss having the A to Z Twitter Chats? Would you be interested in being a part of the 2018 A to Z Team?

Battle of the Bands Results

My previous Battle of the Bands matched two versions of the Crowded House song "Don't Dream It's Over" as performed by Diana Krall and the duo of Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande. The outcome in this one did surprise me a bit after some of the flak I got when I posted other battles with Justin Bieber. I kind of figured that there would be enough Miley Cyrus "hate" to steer voters toward the Diana Krall version. But as I was already aware there are plenty out there who aren't big Diana Krall fans either.

In my opinion both Cyrus and Grande are immensely talented young singers. I thought their version was very well performed even with the goofing off in the instrumental break and the goofy attire. I enjoyed their performance and thought their voices worked very well together. I liked their version and that's why I used it.

I happen to like Diana Krall and the addition of the string ensemble capped this performance off for me to the point that this is where my vote went. I agree with those who pointed out the rough quality of her vocals and that caught my attention as well. The vocal flaws of the live performance are especially apparent when you compare her studio version of the song, but I thought the imperfection added a depth of feeling to this performance and I was okay with it.

The duo looked like it would take the win with a much larger lead for a while, but some later Krall votes came in to make for a better showing. Not a bad contest in the final tally.

Final Vote Tally

Miley/Ariana 13 votes

Diana Krall 11 votes

Next Battle on Monday May 15th

I'll be trying to catch all the Reflections posts in the upcoming week so I won't be posting anything until my next Battle of the Bands on Monday May 15th. Hope to see you then. Not sure what song I'll be using so no clues since I don't have a clue.

Monday, May 1, 2017

We've reached the end of another Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. This 2017 Challenge was outstanding in my view. You can tell us about your A to Z experience in the tradition that is known as the A to Z Reflections Post. Go to the A to Z Blog for more information on the Reflections post. The official Reflections day will be next Monday May 8th. Hope you'll join us with your own Reflections post. You can also help us by taking the survey created by A to Z co-host J. Lenni Dorner. Take the survey here.

Insecure Writer's Support Group

Join us on the first Wednesday of each month in Alex J. Cavanaugh'sInsecure Writer's Support Group--a forum of writers who gather to talk about writing and the writer's life. For a complete list of participants visit Alex's Blog.

May 3 Question: What is the weirdest/coolest thing you ever had to research for your story?

I've always enjoyed doing research. In fact I was one of those dorky guys who read encyclopedias and dictionaries for entertainment. In college I used to spend hours in the library just looking up stuff whether it related to anything I was doing for classes or not. Research is fun! And oh, the rabbit holes you can fall into!

These days most of the research I do is for blog posts and Battle of the Bands (be sure to vote on the Battle you will find below). Once I start researching for either of these, I will invariably find all sorts of ideas for more blog posts and Battles that I'll add to my queue of things to post in the future. If you are one of those who find yourself strapped for ideas in your writing, set off to explore new research projects and if you are keeping your mind awake you will surely start coming up with ideas.

One of my stranger research explorations was when I was writing my 2010 NANO novel Time Light. Part of my story involved characters going to Cairo, Illinois where there is a nearby town listed on the map as Future City. I wanted to incorporate this oddly named place into the story, but since I was over 1800 miles away, just popping over to get information about this place was out of the question.

At the time I was doing this research, there was little I could find on line about Future City so I called the Cairo library. From there I was directed to a wonderful older African-American gentleman who was a retired city worker and a history scholar who had written a couple of books about the area. We conversed for a lengthy period as he filled me in on the origins of Future City and some of its history. Afterwards I asked if he minded if I did a story about him on my blog to help promote his book, but he declined because his book was no longer in print and he wasn't interested in having his name on the internet. Interesting, but he sure was friendly and helpful for the purpose of my investigation.

Battle of the Bands

Battle of the Bandsisthe blogging event started byFar Away Seriesand now hosted byStMcC Presents Battle of the Bands. This event happens twice each month on the 1st and 15th. The premise is simple: Listen to the songs presented below and then in the comments vote for your favorite and tell us why you liked it. Then visit the links listed near the bottom of this post for more Battle action.

It was September of 1986 when I was coming upon Austin, TX on I-35 and "Don't Dream It's Over" came on the radio. I was immediately transfixed by the song. The sound of it was mesmerizing to me--such a beautiful melody with puzzling lyrics. The next chance I had to go to a record store I bought the Crowded House album on cassette and from that point on I was a fan of the group as well as anything related to Neil Finn, the composer of the song. I sought out the albums of his earlier group Split Enz as well as the albums by his brother Tim Finn. The Finn brothers are outstanding songwriters and I now count "Don't Dream It's Over" as one of my all time favorite songs.

Until I ran across a beautiful instrumental jazz version which inspired me to consider the song for a Battle of the Bands match, I had no idea that there were so many great versions of the song. Instead of using that jazz version (I've decided to use a different song by that jazz group for a later Battle) I decided to use two versions by more known artists that some of you might like or dislike. I thought these versions displayed a nice contrast of stylistic approach to a song that has become even more amazing to me after having listened to many cover versions.

To hear the Crowded House original you can click the link in the above title, but please don't vote on that version.

Time To Vote! Between these choices do you have a preference? Hopefully you have an opinion of some kind. Which version do you like the best? Do you prefer the more uptempo fun version of Miley and Ariana or the more somber take by Diana Krall? You don't have to know about music to have an opinion since it all comes down to your own personal taste.

Winner of this Battle Announced on Monday May 8th You have until Sunday May 7th to vote with the winner announced on May 8th. That will be a big day as it is also when my A to Z Reflections will appear. Do you enjoy doing research? Do you ever go down a rabbit hole of research to end up looking up things you originally didn't intend to research? What do you think "Don't Dream It's Over" is about?

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Who's responsible for this blog anyway?

A juggler of words and phrases. My main blog is Tossing It Out. The focus blog for the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge can now be found at a-to-zchallenge.com where updates will be posted until the event in April begins.
Wrote By Rote is about memoir writing.
A Few Words is my Sunday contemplation blog.
A Faraway View is about dreams. Pick what you like or look at them all. I love blogging!